Dray’s white car is already parked at the curb.
It’s drizzling and cold. It feels like rain, but when the drops hit my face, they’re as sharp as needles. It’s raining ice. I stand there and make sure that Dray sees me with his one eye. But he doesn’t roll down the window to let me in. Soon, Kasim will be out. I need enough time with Dray alone, so I walk over to the white car and tap on the window. He unlocks the doors instead of rolling down the window. I open the door and step into the dark place. It smells like weed again, so I inhale to take in everything about this car, this Dray, this moment. Manman says that in order for the lwas to help us, we sometimes have to embody them, let them mount us so they take over our thoughts. We become them so that we can move as they would move.
Maybe I am a little bit like Baron Samedi now, so I ask, “You have some weed?”
Dray laughs. “Some weed? Why don’t you ask your man to hook you up with some weed?”
“He doesn’t know I smoke,” I say.
“Oh, you trying to hide shit from your man, now? Don’t do that. That’s how me and Donna got into this mess we’re in now.”
I think of bringing up Imani and how he hits Donna, but I don’t. That door will lead to somewhere different. I know exactly where I want to go, so I say, “There’s a lot of shit I hide from my man.”
He laughs. “Yo, shorty. You for real? I’m the wrong person you need to be saying that to. Kasim is my boy.” He pulls something out from a little compartment between the seats.
“So. Donna is my cousin. What happens between you and her is your business. But you have to leave my friend alone. Imani doesn’t want you.”
“But that’s between me and Imani, though.”
“No, it’s not. If you try to bring Imani into this, then it’s you, Donna, and Imani.”
“Yeah, and ain’t no Fabulous up in that mix, either. So what are we, in junior high school now? Imani can’t speak up for herself?”
“She’s scared that Donna will want to fight her. Imani is not that kind of girl.”
“And that’s what I like about her,” he says.
“And that’s why you should leave her alone. She doesn’t want any trouble and she doesn’t want you. Or else she will tell everybody that you won’t leave her alone when you already have a girlfriend. You don’t want your business out in these streets, right?”
“Oh, I like how you think. Now, you need to convince your other cousins to mind their own business.” He hands me the marijuana. It’s the length of my pinky finger, and smaller than my mother’s cigars.
“Don’t tell Kasim,” I say.
“Why not? Kasim wouldn’t mind, trust me.” He pulls out a lighter from his coat pocket.
I let him light my weed or cigar, whichever it is, because I can’t tell anyway. I’ve tried cigarettes before, but would never try one of my mother’s cigars during a ceremony for fear that one of the lwas would mount me by mistake. I bring it to my lips, pull in the smoke, inhale, and let it out. I watch as the swirl of cloudy curlicues dance before me.
“Damn, you’re sexy,” Dray says, almost whispering.
I glance toward the windows of the café. They’re fogged, so I can’t see what Kasim is doing now. Still, time is moving and I’ve only got the key in the door. “I like your eye patch. You remind me of someone I know back home.”
“Oh, yeah. An old boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “He used to help me out a lot.” I inhale again, tilt my head back, and exhale.
Dray reaches over and brushes my cheek with his knuckle. “You’re smoking that joint like an OG. I like that.” Then he turns his whole body to me. “Fabulous, what the fuck were you doing at my house that day?”
“Your house?”
“Q’s. My spot.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” I say. My throat and the inside of my nose start to tingle, but I try my best to hide it. I give him back the weed. “I need money, Dray.”
“Oh, shit. What you got in mind?” He takes a hit from the joint, rolls the window down, and flicks it out onto the street. Then he scoots over to get closer to me.
“No, not that kind of money,” I say, moving closer to the door. “My mother is in trouble. I need money to pay a lawyer.”
“Why don’t you ask your crazy-ass cousins? Matter of fact, your even crazier-ass aunt.”
“I don’t want them to know. My mother is being detained in New Jersey. She wants to give up and go back to Haiti. My aunt wants her to go back, too. She says there are no jobs in Detroit, so what’s the point?”
“She ain’t lying.”
“But I want her here with me. I need her here with me. I want her to meet Kasim. I really, really like him.”
“Can’t help you with that, sweetheart. I don’t know what makes you think I look like a fucking bank.”
“That guy I said you remind me of? Zoe Pound,” I lie.